Safety

Safety

OpenShaker guide › Your hardware

How to set the level safely, how loud each game plays, and what protects your shaker and amplifier.

Setting the level

• Turn the amplifier down before the first run. Pick your shaker under Device, press Test tone, and raise the amp until the sweep feels firm but never clatters.
• Test tone is about as strong as the hardest hits. It ignores Master, so it is a fixed reference for setting the amp.
• Set the amp with the loudest game you play. Normal Forza driving is much quieter than the test tone. BeamNG plays close to that level most of the time, like HaptiConnect's BeamNG preset.
• Back off if it clatters, buzzes or distorts. That can damage the shaker, the amp or the seat mount.
• Think of your neighbours. Low frequencies travel through floors and walls.
• Pick the shaker by name rather than "(Windows default output)", so a missing shaker never turns into shaking speakers.

How loud each game plays

• Each game plays at the level HaptiConnect uses for that game. BeamNG.drive, like HaptiConnect's BeamNG preset, is much stronger than the Forza games. Its engine tone alone is about 15 dB louder than Forza Motorsport's.
• The Trackmania levels are first guesses, set on the same scale as the calibrated Forza presets.
• At full Master, BeamNG's collision hits are loud enough to make the limiter (below) turn the whole mix down on every crash.

What protects the output

• A limiter holds peaks just below full scale (-0.13 dBFS). It never distorts the sound. Instead, a loud burst turns the whole mix down, which then recovers within about a second.
• Once the Level meter sits near 0 dB, raising Master or strengths makes the rest of the mix duck harder, not the peaks louder. Lower the loudest effect instead.
• A corrupted value in the telemetry is caught before it can reach the shaker as a full-scale pop.
• If one effect fails, only that effect goes silent.
• Volume changes glide smoothly, so there are no clicks.
• Demo is capped well below full level.

How the limiter works is explained in How the effects are mixed and kept safe.

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Next: Troubleshooting

See also: Shakers, amplifiers and channels · First run